I hurt myself today to see if I still feel

Have you ever seen Boogie Nights? That’s a great movie. My favorite part of that movie is William H. Macy’s character, Little Bill (Or LB for). LB is part of the technical crew that makes the, um ‘adult’ movies. LB has a problem on his hands; it’s that his wife is a cheating whore. Through out the movie LB finds his wife screwing some other guy, generally in public places. Once at his friend’s party, where she’s having sex with another man in the driveway, while a crowd of people stand around and watch. Each time he finds her she says something demeaning to him, he goes away and she continues to rail this other guy. To put it simply, Bill’s life sucks. The only thing in his life he cares about is constantly cheating on him and breaking his heart. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she does it in public for everyone to see. Why would I bring this up, because this is the exact same relationship I share my Arizona Wildcats. I love them, with all my heart, but they’re always out there, in public, breaking my heart. Loosing, usually in the worst of fashions, in the NCAA Tournament. This is my version of LB’s wife f*cking around. And I don’t know what to do about it.

First things first, this will be the last time I ever talk about this debacle, the Arizona-Illinois game. After this entry all of this will be nothing more then a reference point, a reference point known as “That f***ing Game”. As in ‘Yeh my grandpa died, but it’s still not as bad as ‘That f***ing game’ (TFG for short.)’. In this type of game it’s foolish to rehash any of the final 5+ minutes and overtime, b/c there were too many factors that went into this epic collapse. If Arizona gets a single break everything changes. So do yourself a favor and don’t bring up this game and don’t go over it in your head, you’ll just end up making yourself insane; trust me it’s not worth it. TFG changed the way I watched Arizona basketball forever. I probably never be able to see another big U of A game with out thinking of this one, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. We just became the Boston Red Sox of college basketball. TFG will be a date/game that lives on in infamy. This is the official “where were you when JFK got shot” game for a generation of, or maybe every, Arizona fan. This loss will probably stick out and people’s minds more then our ’97 NC. And to make matters worse, TFG won’t go away. It will become Arizona’s calling card; it’ll be reference that will be brought up in every tournament game for years to come. Announcers will mention it in the same breath as the Red Sox miraculous comeback from down 0-3. Every time a team is down late in a game, the announcers will say “Well it looks bad for team A, but remember what happened in TFG”. This will only change, at least the pain of it for Cat fans when, if ever, Arizona wins another Championship. Now I’d like to be an optimist and say something like, well we’ll win it next year and this will just make it sweeter. But truth be told, Arizona probably won’t sniff another final four until Nic Wise shows up on campus. So what now?

Like Little Bill, we’re stuck in a rut. Here we have this beautiful, majestic wife, or in our case team, and she keeps screwing around on us. Things maybe going ok with us for awhile, but in the end where just going to end up watching her get screwed by another guy where everyone can see. And it comes back to the same question of what should I do? If you’re like me after the loss you re-examined your life. You asked yourself why and how you could get so upset and hurt over something that you had no effect on. A simple game that you, no matter what you do/did, could in no way effect. So what then, should we pull a LB and eventually shoot our wife, her lover(s) and then ourselves (which is what happened in the movie)? No, I don’t think that’s the answer. But late at night when I stay awake thinking about TFG, mulling over every agonizing detail, and my heart feels as if it’s going to explode inside of me, LB’s way seems like a viable option.

But, we have to get back up and get back on the horse from whence we were thrown off. Why, because as fans that’s what we do. We keep believing, even when it seems we’ve lost all faith and every reason to believe. Because all in all, we'll eventually get over this, and it will just make everything better for when our team succeeds (have faith.). The sweet is never as sweet with out the sour, or something like that. So get right back on that horse. Although it will be tough, you can do it, but it’ll take awhile. Like going back into the woods after seeing Blair Witch Project. It will take awhile, and it will be scary as hell, but in the end it will be worth it.

Why go with the horse over the analogy of the boxer, several reasons. For one I like the horse analogy better then the boxer one. While the boxer analogy may fit better, you get up and keep taking those punches, it ends poorly. Because as the boxer, you keep getting up and getting whaled on, you eventually retire around 35 and then you live the rest of your life with brain damage. You can’t even remember your greatest fights, so why the hell didn’t you just stay down the first time. Yeh, the horse analogy works better. So, you get back on that horse, even though he threw you bad, and probably will again, because deep down you know that life won’t be the same with out that horse. And regardless of how many times you get throw off that horse, you’ll still keep getting back on. Unless of course you thrown off ala Christopher Reeves. That said, I still like the horse analogy better then the boxer one.

So now you’re back on the horse, just ride carefully. I leave you with some optimism, with some hope. I leave you now with a monologue from Swingers that I believe relates perfectly to TFG: “You know how it is man. You wake up everyday and it hurts a little less, then you wake up one day and it doesn’t hurt at all. And the funny thing is, you almost miss that pain.”

In hindsight, that’s not really optimistic at all, but it’s good advise. Really there’s nothing optimistic I can think of right now. But I’m really starting to like my new haircut. So I guess things aren’t as bleak as they seem.